A Voyage Round The World; But More Particularly to the North-West Coast of America: Performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, in the King George and Queen Charlotte.

Portlock, Nathaniel.

London: John Stockdale, 1789

Rebound in Modern green cloth. Black leather spine label. Fine binding. Portrait frontispiece. 6 folding maps, 14 plates. xii, 384, xl pp.  Perforated institutional stamps on title page, frontis, map margins, and a few other pages.  Frontispiece portrait offset toning to title page, most other plates also have offset toning to the reverse page.  Occasional spotting.     Refs: Sabin 64389; Lada-Mocarski 42; Streeter Sale 3489; Hill 1376; Field 1231; Forbes 177; Howes P497;  Wagner, The Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America, vol. I, pp. 207 & 213; Streeter Sale VI, 3485. 

"Nathaniel Portlock joined the British navy at the age of twenty-four, and was a junior officer on Captain Cook's third voyage, the first to encounter Hawaii. With him on that trip was another young British officer, George Dixon. In 1785 the two men traveled to the north Pacific. Portlock commanded the 1785-1788 expedition from the ship King George while Dixon captained the Queen Charlotte. The purpose of the expedition was to investigate the potential of the Alaskan fur trade and to resume Cook's search for a Northwest Passage through the continent. The pair left England on August 29, 1785, and took nearly a year to reach Alaska, rounding Cape Horn and touching at Hawaii on the way. They charted the Alaskan coast until winter forced them back to Hawaii. In the spring of 1787 they headed north again, reaching the Kenai Peninsula from which Dixon explored southward while Portlock traded for furs. They wintered again in Hawaii before turning west to China to sell their furs, arriving home in England via the Cape of Good Hope on August 24, 1788." - American Journeys, Wisconsin Historical Society, 2017.  

  Provenance: Early signature of A.E. Sims on title page.  Later given by Mrs. Joseph Sims (Rebecca (ne Heath) Sims) to the Free Library.  Joseph Sims (1760-1851) was a prosperous Philadelphia merchant.  Another volume has signatures of Richard K. H. Sims (1809-1833) and A.E. Sims [Ann Elizabeth Sims (1806-1845)].